Nation

Stress driving S’poreans to have sex with underage girls

THE stress of everyday life is driving Singaporean men aged between 30 and 40 to pay young girls to have sex with them, Sin Chew Daily reported.

The daily quoted psychologist Dr Yang Jia Le as saying it was not difficult for men younger than 30 to befriend and pick up underage girls at nightclubs but this is not the case with older men.

“Therefore, they (the older men) need another solution to fulfil their needs.

“The matured men, unlike the younger ones, are financially capable of paying for sex with underage girls,” said Dr Yang from the Mount Elizabeth Hospital, adding that the girls could ask at least S$500 (RM1,228) a session.

Recently, 48 men aged 21 to 49 were charged with having paid sex with girls below 18 years.

Thirty of the men were in the 30 to 40 age group.

> A retiree received a letter from the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS) demanding him to pay a property tax of one cent (2.4sen), Sin Chew Daily said in another report.

The letter added that there would be a 5% penalty if he did not pay up.

Curious to know what would happen next, the man wrote out a cheque and sent it to the tax authority. There has not been any response from the IRAS yet.

> Beer drinkers will have to pay more for their brew and related products, following a decision by Carlsberg Brewery Malaysia Bhd and Guinness Anchor Berhad (GAB) to increase the price of beer and stout between 30 sen and 50 sen next month.

Nanyang Siang Pau reported the breweries had issued notices on the new price lists to their retailers and dealers.

A spokesman of Poh Tech & Co, a GAB dealer in Malacca, told the paper they received the notice a month ago which attributed the price hike to the increasing cost of raw materials.

● Other News & Views is compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with this > sign, it denotes a separate news item.